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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25277827">Billet Doux</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn'>Polly_Lynn</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Castle (TV 2009)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Feels, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Male-Female Friendship, Partners to Lovers, Team as Family</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 08:55:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,904</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25277827</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I think that’s a good idea, sir.” She doesn’t understand right away that the words are hers—that she’s the one who has just said them. </p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kate Beckett &amp; Richard Castle, Kate Beckett/Richard Castle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>An insert for Sucker Punch (2 x 13)</p>
    </blockquote><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“I think that’s a good idea, sir.” She doesn’t understand right away that the words are hers—that she’s the one who has just said them. </p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p></p><div class="">
  <p>“I think that’s a good idea, sir.” She doesn’t understand right away that the words are hers—that she’s the one who has just said them. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She is not alone in her confusion. It’s been a quiet conversation between her and her Captain, but somehow it’s a record-scratch moment for the whole bullpen. Montgomery, himself, is in the act of shaking his head—the act of walking away—before he grasps the fact that she’s said yes, for once. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“A good idea?” He stops short. He narrows his eyes and leans in toward her. She has the distinct impression that he might cup his hand behind his ear like a cartoonish old geezer if he didn’t think it would swing her back the other way. “Beckett, did I just hear you agree that a few days off after what you’ve been through would be a good idea?” </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“You did,” she says, because he apparently <em>did </em>hear her. And she, apparently, heard herself, so she straightens her spine. Anything less will just add to her confusion. Anything less is embarrassing, so she looks as though her mind is made up—as though she’s made a decision, rather than some kind of inexplicable blunder. “I can finish—”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“No finishing anything, Detective.” He takes a step toward her desk. “I’ll give you ten minutes to clear out. And if I see you with so much as a pen in your hand—”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“You won’t,” she cuts in. She thinks about what those ten minutes are for—what Montgomery knows full well they’re for—and she just wants to get on with it. “Not so much as a pen, sir.” </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Montgomery gives her a brisk nod. He turns to continue on his way back to his office, but stops less than half of the way there. “Leave it here, Kate,” he says with the gruff compassion that is his alone among all the cops she’s known in her time on the force. “As much as you can. You leave it right here. “</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Do my best, Captain,” she promises. She understands even as she does that she means it, though her best may not be very good in this case. She understands that she means to try. “Count on it.” </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He studies her a moment, as though there’s more he’d like to say. He settles for another nod, though, and makes it all the way to his office this time. She watches him go. She feels the bottom drop out of her stomach as the door closes and she hears the faint, metallic trill of the blinds swaying across the glass. Then, she turns. She heads for the locker room to retrieve her clothes—the ones soaked in Dick Coonan’s blood. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <hr/>
</div><div class="">
  <p>It takes longer than she expected for her phone to ding with an incoming text notification. It takes her a few beats long than that to come to grips with the fact that she was expecting it to ding—that she thought it would be sooner. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Could be Lanie,” she says out loud. She picks up the phone, face down, drawing the moment out like some corporate gig psychic. “Could be the boys not giving me a moment’s peace.” </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>But it’s not. It’s one boy, in particular, and she knows that. It’s one boy, in particular, and he’s actually given her quite a few more moments’ peace than she expected. She turns the phone over. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Home, sweet home? </em>it reads, complete with question mark. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>It’s more timid than she would have thought. It’s more innocuous, and she realizes she’d been counting on something that would warrant a sharp reply. She realizes that she’d been <em>planning </em>on replying, but there’s nothing in her arsenal for something so . . . innocent. Not from him, and she’s pretty sure she’s far exceeded her sudden self-awareness quotient for the day. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She fiddles with the phone in her lap. She wonder if he’s fiddling with his, and heat curls all the way around the shell of each ear as the poorly worded thought flits across her mind. She moves to set the phone away from her—<em>far</em> away from her before anything poorly worded can make its way through ether—but her thumbs have other ideas. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Something like that. </em>She hits <em>send.</em> Her traitorous thumbs hit <em>send </em>and it’s such a stupid reply. It says nothing and too much at once—it’s snottily terse, or it’s self-pitying. It’s <em>leave me alone, </em>or it’s <em>I don’t want to be alone, </em>and she’s the furthest thing from sure which it is. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She tosses the phone away from herself. She throws it, actually, and it skitters off the far edge of the ottoman that serves as her coffee table. She falls back against the arm of the couch with the heels of her hands pressed against her eyes. She thinks about the jeans and blouse dripping still-pink water that she has hanging from her shower rod. She thinks about the leather jacket she’s almost certainly ruined, but she can’t exactly take it somewhere to have it cleaned with the sleeves blood-soaked almost to the elbows. Home sweet home definitely gets a question mark. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The phone dings again, as she knew it would. She’s a long while about retrieving it, though—longer than she expected of herself. She doesn’t bother with the fiction that it might be Lanie or the boys this time. She doesn’t pause to wonder how he might have taken her poorly worded reply, she simply flips the phone over.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Okay, </em>it says. <em>Here if you want to talk. </em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>It is an utterly unremarkable follow-up. It’s something anyone might send to anyone else who’d been through half of what she’s weathered in the last day. It’s also is nothing anyone would send to her—not the boys, who know better than to run afoul of the cop code, and not Montgomery who had all but audibly blinked when she’d actually agreed to a few days off, rather than riding her desk until the shooting clears; and certainly not Lanie, who is likely <em>still </em>living in fear over what going to Clark Murray first may have done to their friendship; </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>It’s unremarkable and unimaginable at once and she doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t know what she <em>wants </em>to say, but her thumbs have different ideas. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Thanks, </em>no period. Her thumbs tap that out, and the lone word is off and away before she can second guess it. She second guesses it anyway. She thanks her thumbs for their service, then does them one better. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Thanks, Castle. </em> </p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>When I started posting this to Tumblr, I said I thought it would be about ten short chapters of not much happening. It's eight short chapters of not much happening. I am bad at long division, but I am known for my marketing skills. </p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>She camps out in the laundry room’s lone chair while her clothes churn back and forth in the washer. She has smuggled her still-damp jeans and blouse down a basket full of non–blood soaked clothes and forced herself to throw the whole lot in together. It’s sensible. It would not be sensible to afford them—the two offending items—their own damned machine.It would give them more power than they already have, and it turns out they have a lot of power. So she is sensible and a good citizen of her apartment building to boot. She shoves the entire load into the one washer sufficient to her sensible needs and camps out like she’s guilty of something. </p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p></p><div class="">
  <p>She camps out in the laundry room’s lone chair while her clothes churn back and forth in the washer. She has smuggled her still-damp jeans and blouse down a basket full of non–blood soaked clothes and forced herself to throw the whole lot in together. It’s sensible. It would <em>not </em>be sensible to afford them—the two offending items—their own damned machine.It would give them more power than they already have, and it turns out they have a lot of power. So she is sensible and a good citizen of her apartment building to boot. She shoves the entire load into the one washer sufficient to her sensible needs and camps out like she’s guilty of something. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She <em>is</em> guilty of something, of course. She ended a man’s life. The fact comes to her that way for the first time as she rocks without rhythm from the chair’s three level legs on to the single wonky one. It comes to her that way as she studies the blur of suds and dark fabric tossed on stormy seas behind the machines’s glass front. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She has regrets. That is astonishingly gross understatement for the complex and potent mix of emotions roiling just beneath the surface, but that’s the part she’s ready to acknowledge right now. She regrets with a pain that is sharp, deep, and constant that she ended Dick Coonan’s life before she could learn anything more about who ordered her mother’s murder. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She remembers with a burning mix of fury, shame, and embarrassment the first slash of <em>that </em>regret. She remembers the thick, sickening pump of Coonan’s blood beneath her hands and shock of her own scalding tears. But here, with the unsteady tick of a metal chair leg against cracked tile—with the regular <em>shug, shug, shug, </em>of the washer—she regrets taking a man’s life.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>That part is belated, and she feels a new kind of shame. She feels a deep uncertainty about herself a cop—as a human—that it’s taken her a day to come around to that. It’s too heavy for the laundry room. It’s too much, and she feels the press of a decade of loss inside her own chest. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Her phone dings just then. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She almost jumps out of her skin. The wonky chair nearly goes over entirely backwards and she has a deeply unpleasant flash of memory featuring Sarah Manning and tragic, accidental head wounds in the laundry room. She rights herself at the last second, and the moment is . . . weirdly cathartic. That hot-skin prickle of fear all over her body pops some kind of release valve, and if she’s not actually smiling when she digs the phone out—if her heart is still thumping without rhythm in her chest—she is something closer to centered. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>Full day? Alphabetizing your Russian literature? </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>It makes her laugh. The asinine specificity of it—the fact that it’s a dig and a compliment at the same time—makes her laugh loud enough that the sound bounces around the room. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>It’s 9:30 am. Dewey decimal-ed all that after my 10K, before breakfast. </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The washer <em>whirrs </em>to a drum-shaking stop. She pockets the phone and makes herself ignore the second, damned near immediate ding as she separates out what can go In the dryer and what she’’ll take upstairs to toss over the rickety drying rack she needs to replace. She holds up the jeans and tries to decide if the dark color on the damp thighs is imaginary or not. She bundles them into the basket with half a dozen other things and shoves the rest into the dryer. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She lines up her quarters and gives the silver tongue of the coin slot a shove to set things tumbling. She eyes the damp clothes in the basket, then the wonky chair. It should be no contest. Her tailbone is already griping about the forty-five minutes she’s spent with little but cracked vinyl between her and the plywood seat. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She launches herself back into it anyway, though. She slips the phone from her pocket and tips herself over on to the wonky leg. She tips herself as far back on two legs as she dares and peeks down at his reply. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>Library talk? Why, Detective, I don’t think I’ve ever sexted before noon . . . </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She blushes. It’s a stupid comment—dorky in the extreme—but it makes her blush and press the phone face down against her thigh for long enough that he must think he’s crossed a line. The phone dings again, and when she flips it screen up, he’s backing off at speed. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>Anyway. Won’t bother you. </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>There’s a pause not quite long enough for her to kick herself for locking up for no good reason, other than the fact that she’s not sure whether she’s imaging the dark discoloration on the thighs of her damp jeans. The phone dings again. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>Glad you’re keeping busy. </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Laundry</em>, her thumbs tap out, and there’s a spiritual exclamation point. There’s a plaintive cry and a follow-up. <em>Staring into the tumble-dry void. </em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>It’s a bit much. It’s more than a bit much, but she doesn’t want him to go. She wants company. She wants <em>his </em>company, but the phone stays silent until she’s on the verge of propping the basket on her hip and heading upstairs. There’s a ding just as the wonky short leg <em>thunks </em>against the cracked tile. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>What’s your tumble-dry mantra? </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Her eyes dart to the machine’s glass front. She hears the metal-on-metal report of zippers and buttons. She thinks of the washer’s <em>shug, shug, shug. </em>She shakes her head, laughing again, because it <em>is </em>meditative, camping out here. It might also be messed up hyper-vigilance about a set of clothes no one in the world would recognize as recently blood soaked, but it’s meditative and not entirely at odds with the reason she said yes to the Captain’s offer of a few days to herself. She closes her eyes and lets sounds of the tumbling drum fill her mind.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She opens them again and grins hard as she taps out her reply: <em>Brassiere. </em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She lets it land. She bites her lip and makes herself wait for a long count of five before she follows it up with <em>Yours?</em> complete with the most innocent question mark  in the history of question marks.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>It’s more than a long count of five before he replies. It’s more than a long count of <em>five </em>fives before the screen flares. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Same. How weird is that?</em> </p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>A/N: See? Another short chapter where nothing much happens. Brain Poneh gonna Brain Poneh. </p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>It’s too cold to walk. She’s walking anyway, and January seems delighted to have her in its clutches. She doesn’t mind at the moment, though her eyes and nose are streaming from the bitter wind, and she keeps checking her hands to confirm that she is actually wearing gloves. It sure as hell doesn’t feel like she is.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="">
  <p>It’s too cold to walk. She’s walking anyway, and January seems delighted to have her in its clutches. She doesn’t mind at the moment, though her eyes and nose are streaming from the bitter wind, and she keeps checking her hands to confirm that she is actually wearing gloves. It sure as hell doesn’t feel like she is. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>But she doesn’t mind the raw afternoon’s bright, mocking sun, or the fact that sensation is fleeing various parts of her body, because the alternative is the subway. The alternative is a cab and time to sit and think—these are not currently her friends, so she moves her body through New York’s eternally crowded streets. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She takes the vibration in her pocket for some kind of frostbite offshoot at first. She wonders with one-one-hundredth of her attention why her right hip would be afflicted and not her left. The sensation comes again, and she remembers the switch she’d flipped on her phone before sliding into the booth opposite her dad.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She fumbles it from her coat pocket with cold-deadened fingers. She hits the wrong button three times before she manages to call up the notification screen. There’s his name and a single line of text, his name again, and another line, but it’s all blurred with fresh tears called up by a particularly vicious blast of wind. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She steps out of the flow of foot traffic into the doorway of some long-shuttered business. The plywood over the windows has been prolifically tagged, but it provides a modest wind break. She swipes her eyes clear with her gloves and squints down at the message. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Things go okay? </em>and then, three minutes later, according to the time stamp, <em>Use your mantra if you need an extraction. </em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She grins to herself in the filthy doorway. She thinks about sending <em>Brassiere </em>through the ether, just to mess with him, but she’s already a little worried about how perfectly he’s timed this—his first <em>ping </em>of day three coming in a precisely casual twelve minutes after she and her dad would have most likely pushed back from their table—and she doesn’t want to be responsible for a Castle plan being visited upon some perfectly innocent diner. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Her grin fades a little. He <em>has </em>timed things perfectly. Their back-and-forth the day before had extended well beyond the laundry room. She’d told him, in impressionistic strokes, about the date she’d set with her dad—about her uncertainty over how much she should tell him about Dick Coonan, about the other victims.  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>And then she’d panicked a little. She’d looked down at the work of her thumbs and been shocked at the honesty—the intimacy—they had somehow led her into, and she’d tried to laugh it off with some clumsy joke about him bailing her out if she ended up taking hostages. Breath had rushed into her on a sharp, painful gasp exactly one second too late. She’d then spent another forty agonizing seconds wondering about the best spot on a concrete island to dig a hole for the purposes of crawling into, before his reply had come. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>I usually prefer a STARRING role in hostage dramas. But for you, I’d make an exception. </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She scrolls upward, not too far, and finds the exchange. It makes her laugh. It makes her knock her head against the grimy brick behind he. She strips off one useless glove to send something other than <em>Brassiere </em>through the ether and realizes almost immediately that she has deeply wronged the glove. The cold takes an immediate bite out of her newly exposed skin, and she has to keep things brief. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>All’s well. </em>She hits send to break the message up—to send two pings of her own, because that seems important. <em>Heading home</em>. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She makes good on it. She launches her way back into the stream of New Yorkers hissing between their teeth as they put their shoulders into the wind. Her feet have grown shockingly cold in the last three minutes. Every bit of her is shockingly cold and her apartment feels like it’s a million light years away. Her pocket vibrates, and the sensation decides her. She sticks her still-bare thumb and index finger into her mouth and summons a cab with one sharp whistle. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He keeps her company again as she thaws out her fingers and toes and the frigid skin of her face. He regales her with tales of his laser tag battle with Alexis that morning, and of Martha’s treacherous interruption of same, which necessitated a lecture on the sacred nature of the arena. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>Just in case you think you cornered the market on tough conversations with parents today. </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>It’s not the first time he’s cracked that door open. He’s asked between the lines three or four times already how breakfast with her dad had really gone. But the truth is she doesn’t know. Her dad’s default mode is stoic, at least with her. At least when it comes her mom. And whether it’s nature, nurture, or simply their shared loss, stoic its her default with him. So beyond the compulsory <em>It wasn’t as bad as the news made it sound </em>on her side, and the subdued <em>I should hope not </em>on his, she doesn’t really know how it went. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Not exactly tough</em> . . . </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>That’s what she decides on. It’s half of what she decides on. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Not exactly </em>NOT <em>tough. </em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She studies the stacked text bubbles as she waits for the reply she knows is coming. They look about right and feel, strangely enough, like all she has to say on the subject at the moment, which he knows—which he seems to know before she does. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>Beckett family dinners: Conducted entirely in Zen koans? Y/N? </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She tells him that they’re conducted sestinas and villanelles. He sends her searching the internet when he declares that Clan Castle prefers gazhals and Clerihews. He keeps her company as afternoon turns quickly to evening and she’s surprised to find another day gone. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Day three, she reminds herself and guilt tries to take root. She should be doing something—coming to terms, digging beneath the surface of regret. She should be getting over the death of Dick Coonan at her hands, but instead, she’s puttering her days away, locked in this silly back-and-forth with him. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She looks at her phone as she switches off the light. She reads his last message again—<em>Until tomorrow. Here if you want to talk. </em>She holds the phone tight and things maybe she <em>is </em>doing something.  </p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>A/N: Again, short. Nothing happens. Discussions of obscure poetic forms are the opposite of things happening. </p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>She gets to tell the full story on day four. “Gets to.” It’s her post-incident interview at last, bright and early on a Monday morning, and it’s fine. The members of the team are sympathetic, that’s clear, but it doesn’t mean they don’t put her through her paces. They take her through the story from front to back and back to front again, and she tells it, more or less the same way each time—Jacky Coonan to the girl, the girl to the drugs, the drugs to Johnny Vong, and Johnny Vong to Dick Coonan and the non-existent Rathborne. </p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="">
  <p>She gets to tell the full story on day four. “Gets to.” It’s her post-incident interview at last, bright and early on a Monday morning, and it’s fine. The members of the team are sympathetic, that’s clear, but it doesn’t mean they don’t put her through her paces. They take her through the story from front to back and back to front again, and she tells it, more or less the same way each time—Jacky Coonan to the girl, the girl to the drugs, the drugs to Johnny Vong, and Johnny Vong to Dick Coonan and the non-existent Rathborne. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She tells <em>that </em>story, because her cop’s mind can’t tell it any other way. But she’s not a cop here. Sympathetic or no, as far as the investigative team is concerned—a seasoned homicide detective from another precinct and a couple of suits from Internal Affairs—she’s a suspect, and the story that pieces one lead together with the next is not the one they want. It’s not the one that will clear the shooting, and that’s what she’s here for.  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She takes a breath and tells the story they need to hear, the one with details her cop’s mind hasn’t already filtered out as irrelevant. She thinks it will be hard. She thinks for a drowning moment of Castle and the details that land thick on the page. She thinks for a drowning moment that she can’t do this, but her memory offers them up—the most curious details—though out of sequence. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Her first memory is blood, but not the kind she’s expecting. Her gaze falls, fleetingly, to her own thighs. She’s not wearing the jeans, of course. She’s wearing the nicest wool trousers she owns, and anyway, the blood she’s thinking of is the dark maroon spreading across Coonan’s upper lip from when Castle’s head had slammed with bone-crunching force into his nose. Her memory lingers on the different shade of red it seemed to be—dark right away in contrast to the bright crimson that pumped endlessly between her fingers. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Next, memory rewinds to the money—her insane break room promise to pay him back and his <em>Negative, Ghost Rider. </em>She presses her lips together and keeps that detail to herself. She moves on to Dick Coonan’s verbal slip—<em>her killer</em>—then leaps ahead to her own plea to the Captain—<em>I need him alive</em>. Before it can sound like a plea—like something calculated to argue for the purity of her her intentions, memory skips backward again to the ballpoint pen in Dick Coonan’s hand in the moment before he went for the uniform’s gun. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She remembers, maybe for the first time, that he had slipped on it—Coonan had. The new detail deals a blow to her composure, and she sees one of the IA guys sit up straighter, bounce the cap of his own ballpoint on a yellow legal pad as she recalls that just for a second before he grabbed Castle and jammed the Glock into his ribs, the cheap plastic barrel of the pen had rolled right under Coonan’s shoe, and he’d slipped. She hears herself faithfully relating such a silly detail. She hears herself wondering aloud if she’d missed something in that second, wondering if that had been her opportunity to act. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>They don’t have an answer for her. It’s their job <em>not </em>to have an answer for her. Their job is simply to assemble the facts from interview, from physical evidence—to determine whether, according to departmental guidelines, she was justified in taking a man’s life. It’s not their job to tell her whether or not she missed the moment that might have changed everything. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Things wrap up not long after. There are no promises, of course, but the sympathetic vibe runs strong through the round of handshakes she exchanges with each of them. She emerges from the room’s fluorescent lights, from the building itself, into another brittle and brilliant January morning. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She’s not the first to text him on day four. He’d been up brighter and earlier than her meeting  to lob more obscure poetic forms her way, to say nothing of his list of suggested chores to help her while away the days. He hadn’t wished her luck or mentioned the interview at all. He hadn’t asked any of the million questions he must have about the whole process. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>And he hasn’t pinged her with a <em>Things go okay?</em> or anything else. She feels hollow about it for a moment. She feels irrationally abandoned, not just by him, but by everyone—Montgomery, Lanie, the boys.   </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>But the cold shakes her, then. The wind howls its way under her coat collar and New York roars around her. The city reminds her that here, she’s as alone as she does or does not want to be. She strips off one glove, yelping as January takes another bite. A mook striding by with a pair of city coveralls pulled on over his winter gear spares her a sympathetic look. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>How’s your head?</em> She manages to jounce out on the move. She’s descending into the subway as she sends it. She’s practically cheek to cheek with half a dozen bundled up strangers who have barely made it inside with her before the doors close.  There’s literally no room to move enough to check the phone when she feels it vibrate. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>Indestructible. Thanks for asking. </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She reads the reply as she climbs the stairs once the train belches her out at her station. She imagines a different world where Coonan had lived and they’d broken him like they broke Johnny Vong. She imagines Castle making much of his battle scars. She emerges into the cold again and squints down at the message awaiting her reply.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Do you remember the pen? </em>She leans against the outside of a bus shelter with her left glove stripped off this time. <em>Coonan slipped on it. </em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The letters of the name are a shock as painful as sudden, bright sun—as sudden, bitter wind. She waits for his reply, right there in the cold. It’s a stupid thing to punish herself over. But she waits. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>Did he? Must have been too busy being the idiot who got grabbed to notice. </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Not an idiot</em>, she fires back. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He replies with an orphan ellipsis. She laughs loud enough to turn the heads of seasoned bus riders who usually can’t be bothered to look up for anything less than an alien invasion. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>An idiot, definitely, just not in this instance. </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Better. Thanks for noticing. Signed—An idiot.  </em> </p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>A/N: Brain Poneh really wanted to know what happened to that pen. There’s your glimpse into Brain Poneh’s darkest, most boring corners for today. </p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>She hears on day five—first thing after her morning run—that the shooting has cleared. There are odds and ends to clean up before she is back on active duty. She’ll spend a day or two, at most, at her desk with Ryan and Esposito metaphorically shooting spitballs at her from across the bullpen. Metaphorically if they know what’s good for them. </p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="">
  <p>She hears on day five—first thing after her morning run—that the shooting has cleared. There are odds and ends to clean up before she is back on active duty. She’ll spend a day or two, at most, at her desk with Ryan and Esposito metaphorically shooting spitballs at her from across the bullpen. Metaphorically if they know what’s good for them. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She’s eager to get to it. The restlessness with being home settles on her all at once and she thinks of calling Montgomery—of finagling her way into at least the afternoon back on the job. The phone is in her hand, ready to dial, but the screen lights up before she can. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>Good morning. Good news? </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The message sends her falling back against the couch cushions. She remembers the coffee she’s hardly touched—the one she’d detoured past the good coffee truck to get—and she pulls her feet up under the fuzzy throw blanket. She tips her head toward the window and blinks in surprise at the glare of the winter sun that’s totally at odds with the rainy-day feeling that’s come over her as suddenly as the restlessness of a moment ago. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Good news, </em>she taps out, then finds herself adding, <em>Back tomorrow. Behind the desk at least. </em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Her thumb hovers for a second, but she sends it. It’s a settled question now, and she shifts the blanket more fully over her legs and bare toes. She takes a long, slow sip of her coffee and looks inward to see if she’ll second guess herself. She finds her answer in the heaviness of her body sinking deeper into the couch. The phone vibrates against her drawn-up thighs as she curls both hands to draw the paper cup’s warmth into them. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>That sound you just heard is the city breathing a collective sigh of relief that Nikki Heat is back on the job. </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He’s captured it in his gallant little joke. He’s pinned down for her, once again, what it is she’s feeling—relief. Her shoulders unknot a little with each sip of coffee, with each moment spent here in comparative stillness. She is eager to get to it—the rough and tumble treatment that will come with her return, and the eventual everyday that keeps her sane. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She is eager to turn her attention the pursuit of her mother’s ultimate killer. She takes a breath about that. She takes another. It’s a sea change she’s given little thought to since her declaration in the middle of his loft—<em>What</em> <em>I want is to find my mother’s killer. </em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The all-or-nothing lid she’s kept tightly clamped over her mother’s case for years is well and truly off, and she is . . . relieved. She’s afraid, too. She’s shaken by the possibility that she’ll lose herself in it again, but even that seems positive—that she knows enough to worry is a relief profound enough that she is weak with it. She’s in need of the respite she was meant to be taking all along.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She’d thank him for it—for once again pulling her state of mind somehow into focus—but it’s too abstract. It’s too touchy–feely for what this back-and-forth between them has become, on her side, anyway.  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Never call me that stripper name again</em>, she replies instead. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>And with that he’s hot on the trail of her <em>real </em>stripper name, her porn name, her drag name. She is hot on the trail of not much. She finishes her coffee and straightens up a bit, though with the way she lives, there’s little to do on that front. In between an assault on her microwave’s less-than-sparkling interior and more runs than necessary to the trash chute, the recycling room, the mail box, she quizzes him on the secret identities. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>Street I grew up on is a no go. </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>That’s an opening too good to pass up. Her smirk as she fires off <em>Because of the “growing up” part </em>seems to bemuse the neighbor who catches her spending quality time in the garbage room. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She doesn’t care, though. The zing is good enough that he’s moved to all caps:<em> BECAUSE WE MOVED SO MUCH.</em> He knows better than to try to leave it at that, so he goes parenthetical:<em> (But also the “growing up” part.) </em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Pets?</em> she idly inquires as she slides a few linear feet of books from the shelf preparatory to dusting.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>Do you really think Martha Rodgers could keep two things alive? </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She likes his mother. She feels a surprise rush of warmth at the memory of the woman’’s wholly unexpected embrace and murmur of empathy when she’d showed up at the loft. She<em> likes</em> her, but it’s a solid counter. She thinks of the oddball antics she’s been party to in that loft and sometimes wonders how they’ve survived long enough for there to be three generations. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She almost shoots back something along those lines, but she thinks better of it. If her thanks earlier in the day would have been too touchy–feely, taking that shot would be the opposite. Too harsh or something, which is weird. She’s certainly burned him worse than that to his face. But this exchange between them is—it has <em>become—</em>something different. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Imaginary pets? </em>she asks instead. That pays off in her own personal short story collection by Richard Castle. He begins in the city with a pair of rats living in the walls of his fifth floor walk-up. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Xavier and Devin, he calls them. Xavier is an abrasive tough talker. Devin is on the nerdy side and eager to please. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>And they can talk, because . . . ?</em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Her phone vibrates its way across the end table as a spate of replies comes in. She makes herself finish re-shelving the last of her books before she drops on to the couch, laughing out loud at the origin story, which involves falling into the Gownanus Canal and subsisting on expired Taystee Cakes.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He paints himself as a friend to all woodland creatures in the summer stock towns he traveled to with Martha. She pauses in her dinner prep—because she’s actually cobbling together a home-cooked meal, rather than ordering out—to tweak him about that: <em>Like a Disney Princess?</em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Representation matters, Beckett</em>, he replies and she can just imagine the offended sniff that goes with it. From there, he spins her tales of a sleep-away camp for misfit boys and girls with mousy hair where the campers get to perfect their songbird- and helper mouse–attracting singing. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>And then it’s night time. It’s not just winter dark, it’s . . . end-of-the-day, get-ready-for-bed dark, and she doesn’t know where the time has gone. Even as the untruth crosses her mind, her eyes drop to the tiny bit of battery her phone has left and the screen full of back-and-forth texts stretching across hours. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Ready for tomorrow? </em>he asks, and it’s a strange change of gears that’s also not strange at all. It’s like he’s there in her head again.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Yeah, </em>she sends, and then, because the sad little word seems wrong on its own, she adds. <em>Yeah. Ready to be back. </em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Good. </em>It seems he doesn’t like the sad little word on its own, either. A companion message comes in, almost right away. <em>Good to hear it.</em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>I’ll see you then. </em>She has a sudden case of butterflies and almost ends it with a question mark.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>See you then. </em>The pause after his reply arrives is minuscule. Objectively it is, but she holds her breath. <em>And until then . . . </em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She picks up his ellipsis with a smile, though she’s still unsettled <em>. . . There if I want to talk. </em> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>Now you’re catching on, Detective.</em>
  </p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>It was with this chapter that I realized by math was wrong. I realized this would be more like seven or eight chapters, rather than ten, depending on how I break what remains. This one ended up a tiny bit longer than the first four, but the days of nothing at all happening were numbered. </p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>She doesn’t hear the phone over night, but she has a text from him, bright and early, on day six. Showtime, Nikki Heat. </p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="">
  <p>She doesn’t hear the phone over night, but she has a text from him, bright and early, on day six. <em>Showtime, Nikki Heat. </em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She’s in the process of blearily reminding him about the stripper name and the various creative punishments she will visit upon him if he continues to use it on her. But somewhere in her pre-coffee fog, she notices the timestamp. This particular ping came in <em>so </em>early, in fact, that it’s on the very cusp between outrageously late and bright and early. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Writing? </em>The question is off and away before hit occurs to her that the lone word, in this case, is casual to the point of intimate. It carries with it the sense that she knows what he gets up to late at night, and it’s not what <em>Page 6</em> would have the world believe. The butterflies from the night before beat their wings again, but she thinks back on the last few days and doesn’t precisely regret the coziness of it. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She sets the phone down and stumbles through her morning. She wrestles something coffee-like out of her recalcitrant countertop beast. She fetches the paper and flips through the sections, mostly unseeing, as she sips her coffee-like substance and dreams of a perfect latte from the break room machine. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She’s not really expecting a reply any time soon. She figures he must have sent the text before he finally crashed for the night, just so he wouldn’t miss sending her off on her first day back.  She pictures the latte again. She pictures him handing it over to her with a flourish and realizes he might not text back at all. She might just . . . see him. In person. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Regret stirs in her chest, and then she feels a twang of nerves. Both feelings are ridiculous, she tells herself sternly. He won’t have to text, because he’ll just be there—on her heels, bombarding her with conspiracy theories, keeping her coffee mug topped off. That’s all as it should be, so what’s there to regret? A burgeoning repetitive stress injury in both thumbs? And what in the world is there to be nervous about? </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She drains the last of her sub-mediocre coffee, wincing as a rush of grounds takes up residence beneath her tongue. She palms the phone off the table. She does a double take when she sees the text balloon—a second ping she must have missed when she was getting the paper. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>Only a truly generous soul would call it writing. </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>There’s an odd lack of swagger in it. Smugness is his armor when it comes to writing—she knows him well enough at this point to recognize that—and she finds herself unprepared for this sudden peek behind the facade. She studies the time elapsed since he sent it and notes the pointed absence of some light-hearted follow-up. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She realizes that she’s been assuming, somewhere in the back of her mind, that his life has been going on as usual—that he’s been romping around the loft with his kid, writing away, making the most of the recent twists in her mother’s case, and milking his star turn as a hostage for all its worth. For all his damned near psychic outreach for the last six days—lighting up her phone with what she needs to hear when she needs to hear it—she hasn’t really scratched the surface of what’s going on with him. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>There’s a whisper in her ear about what’s easy. She’ll see him today and she can take stock then. The whisper says there’s no sense in spoiling this pleasant, epistolary adventure they’ve been having with something heavy that she’ll probably screw up anyway.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The whisper in her ear sneers that she is <em>not </em>a truly generous soul, but she’d like to push back against that, partly in thanks—partly because it’s the decent thing to do when he has undeniably been there for her—and partly because it seems important. It seems like the first test she’s facing in world where she’s intent on pursuing her mother’s case. By both instinct and long force of habit, her instinct is to close herself off and narrow her focus absolutely. And this—the simplest of gestures—is an opportunity to make a different choice.  She knows that, she <em>wants </em>to make it, but she doesn’t know what to say. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She thinks back to his first, timid message, complete with question mark. She takes a leaf out of his book: <em>Long night? </em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She heads for the shower, not exactly satisfied with herself, but getting there. Even over the water pounding against her scalp, she hears the burr of the phone against the vanity, once, twice, three times with the briefest of pauses in between. The third ding has her peeking through the shower curtain, debating whether or not she wants to navigate dripping all over the floor just to check. She rolls her eyes at herself and whisks the curtain closed again. She finishes the shower, scrupulously by the book, and wraps herself in a towel. She runs the brush through her hair and only then lets herself turn the phone face up. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Not anymore </em>( ˙Θ˙(˙Θ˙)˙Θ˙ )</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She stares for an unnecessary moment at the mysterious trailing characters, but all is revealed in the next line: (<em>Chirping birds.)</em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>A smile fights with a scowl as she turns the phone on a diagonal and tries to see it, but there’s one more line: <em>Yeah. Kind of a long night. Obviously. </em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She pictures the sheepish look that sometimes makes its way past his pain-in-the-ass persona. She pictures <em>him</em> and there’s that tense, ridiculous vibration of nerves again. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>Maybe you should get some beauty rest, </em>she taps out with damp thumbs.<em>Gotta look fresh for your public at the precinct. </em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>My “public.” (</em>つ▀<em>¯</em>▀<em>)</em>つ<em>,</em> he replies, apparently trusting in her ability to decipher the sunglasses and finger pistols. They’re easier to figure out than the sarcastic quote marks. Those make her uneasy, even beyond her strange case of nerves. She’s searching for something to say, but he beats her to it. <em>Beauty rest might be a good idea. Obviously. </em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em>All my ideas are good, </em>she sends back, and maybe it <em>is </em>just lack of sleep. Maybe it is, but something makes her follow up. <em>I’ll see you later. </em>There’s some serious <em>oomph </em>on the period that is definitely not a question mark. She holds her breath, with her damp hair still tickling the nape of her neck. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>See you later. (-, – )…zzzZZZ </em>
  </p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>A/N: Brain Poneh is absolutely certain that Castle—early technology adopter that he is—would have been very into old school emoticons (ask your parents, kids) and ASCII art. Brain Poneh thinks deep thoughts. </p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>There’s no fanfare awaiting her at the precinct. There’s no record scratch followed by silence to mark her return, though one by one, people find transparent excuses for a drive-by past her desk. They ask pointless questions, relay information she probably doesn’t need to know, beg for paperclips, scotch tape, scratch paper, and as an exaggerated afterthought they tell her there was never a doubt in their mind that the shooting would clear just fine.  </p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="">
  <p>There’s no fanfare awaiting her at the precinct. There’s no record scratch followed by silence to mark her return, though one by one, people find transparent excuses for a drive-by past her desk. They ask pointless questions, relay information she probably doesn’t need to know, beg for paperclips, scotch tape, scratch paper, and as an exaggerated afterthought they tell her there was never a doubt in their mind that the shooting would clear just fine.  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>There seems to be a blanket prohibition against welcoming her back, or even acknowledging she was gone. She sits with the reality of that between manufactured visits and decides that she’s simply glad of it. She could read into it, cross-examine, wonder if it means they’re all turning a blind eye to what they perceive as weakness in her. She decides to be glad instead. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Lanie hasn’t gotten the memo about the moratorium. She sings a bluesy, improvised welcome-back tune into the phone without even waiting for a hello. Kate feels a smile spread across her face that’s wider and more genuine than the cautious fare she’s offered up in thanks to others. With Lanie still on the line, the boys materialize. A raucous, four-way conversation ensues. It involves no small amount of tugging the receiver back and forth, and it eventually brings Montgomery to the door of his office. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The Captain scowls, because that’s his role in these sibling-squabble scenes. He has not fabricated an excuse to come see her this morning, but he catches Kate’s eye and gives her a nod. She returns It, and in the space that the gesture takes she misses whatever it is that Lanie is chiding Esposito over. She’s jostled loose enough from the flow of things that she threatens to hand the receiver over altogether. Lanie tells her not to bother, because the employees of the OCME work for a living. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Their hard-working ME signs off, and the little knot on the bullpen end of the family breaks up not long after Kate sets the phone in its cradle. The boys stick around for a few minutes, still anxious to give her a hard time that is due them by rights, but they do have a case to close out. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Boring,” Esposito says like it’s a personal affront. “Took like a minute to solve.” </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Deadbeat brother. Nothing interesting,” Ryan agrees. “You and Castle didn’t miss a thing.” </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>It hangs in the air. The entanglement of their two names and the question the two of them haven’t asked. Esposito looks for a moment as if he’d like to smack his partner upside the head. Ryan looks like a puppy who suspects he’s in trouble. For her part, it’s an act of will not to turn toward the elevator as though he’ll materialize on cue. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Your boyfriend will be by later,” she says as she forces an eye roll and swings her chair around in a clear back-to-business move.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The boys take the hint, trailing a muttered argument behind them as they head back toward their own desks. She keeps her eyes front but envies  their paperwork before long. There’s precious little for her to do. Her inbox, predictably, has filled to overflowing in less than a week,  but everything is more or less at-a-glance trash. She clears her voicemail just as quickly, and the morning goes slowly. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“We were thinking lunch out somewhere?” Ryan’s voice startles her. He winces as she bangs her knee on the bottom of the desk drawer she's been deep into organizing. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Lunch?” She looks at her watch in surprise. She’s been deep into organizing the drawer for a while, apparently. “Uh. Thanks. I think I’m gonna hang around here.” She tips her head toward the desk as though what she has going is both vital and engrossing, but it’s obviously neither. “I’m, uh . . . waiting on a few phone calls.” Ryan doesn’t respond, and she feels compelled to go on. “Odds and ends so I can get back out there.” </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She gestures toward the elevator just as it dings open. She feels a lift inside her, the warring butterflies of nerves and excitement tumbling together, because it seems impossible that the doors won’t roll back to reveal Castle. Impossible or not, though, they reveal nothing more than another detective and a hangdog-looking perp. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Because it’s Ryan, she’s spared the immediate, knowing expression when her shoulders slump in disappointment. He looks perplexed for a beat and a half, before realization sets in. It gives the tips of her ears plenty of time to go red with embarrassment before he’s stumbling backward and blushing, himself. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Calls. Yeah! Don’t want to miss anything like that!” He hooks a thumb toward Esposito. “Can we bring you anything?” </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She shakes her head and mumbles something about the vending machine. In her peripheral vision, Esposito is shaking <em>his </em>head at his partner’s total and complete lack of cool. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The lunch hour passes. Her desk is in a state of organization so absolute, it’s unlikely she’ll ever be able to find anything again. The boys drop by with fortune cookies donated from their lunches, just to rub in the fact that they went for Chinese without her. She never did visit the vending machine, so she munches the cookies instead. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She ponders one fortune, then the other. She sets aside <em>No one can walk backwards into the future </em>to show him later. It’s just the kind of nonsense he’s likely to find profound. She folds <em>Others can help you now </em>into the tiniest square she can manage and tucks it with care behind the spare scotch tape at the back of her newly organized drawer. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The afternoon starts to wane. She’s had her phone zipped away in her bag out of superstition or something equally silly. She looks over one shoulder, then the other, when she retrieves it, as though someone might catch her in the act of double—triple—checking that she hasn’t missed a text. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She hasn’t missed a text. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She’s tempted to send one of her own, though she can think of a host of reasons not to, beginning with he’s sleeping and ending with she is not, in fact, a thirteen year old girl desperate for word from her first boyfriend.  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Her desk phone is more cooperative than her cell. The calls she really has been expecting come in, and each time, she hears Montgomery pick up his phone not long after. The Captain taps on the window nearest his desk, phone still pressed to his ear, and beckons her. Fear clenches briefly at her guts until she realizes he’s smiling and nodding. She waits out the last half-minute of his call politely at door as she cracks it open. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Chief of Detectives, Beckett.” He beams with pride as he drops the phone into its cradle. “Wants the best back on the streets ASAP.” </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Good,” she says, trying to hide how relieved she is, though her own calls gave every indication that she’d cleared the last administrative hurdles. “That’s good.” </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“I think it is.” Montgomery leans back in his chair to give her a thorough look up and down. “You took it easy?” He narrows his eyes and plays at being stern again.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“I did, sir.” She meets his eye, full on. She lets him see that she’s not unaffected, but she made the most of the last few days, and she’s coping. “Thank you again for approving the time—”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Approving.” He waves her off. “I’d’ve ordered it if I’d thought it’d do any good.” </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Still,” she says, insisting on giving thanks where it’s due. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He accepts it with a nod and lifts a slim file folder from his blotter. “Last step.” </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Your incident report, sir?” She reaches for it, surprised to find her hand shaking a little. She doesn’t exactly relish the idea of another run through the story, and she wonders what details will surface this time</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“It’s a formality,” he reminds her. He’s noticed the tremble. “You’re good to go already. You can give it a read in the morning and sign it.” He gestures toward the door, and she recognizes it for what it is—an instruction to head out for the evening. He punctuates the order by rising and lifting his jacket from the back of his chair. “Good to have you back, Detective.” </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Good to be back, sir.” </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She follows him out of the fishbowl office, file in hand. He eyes her as he waits for the elevator,  and she flashes a noncommittal smile that <em>might </em>mean she’s taking his advice and knocking off for the day. The Captain shakes his head as the doors close and the red light above the elevator ticks down to three. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>It’s late in the day, she realizes. Ryan and Esposito are still at their desks, but there’s something last-minute about both their movements. Esposito is haphazard and impatient. He’s half out of his chair as he scrawls some note to himself and wastes a scowl on whomever it is on the other end of the phone. Ryan is tapping the the edges of the things in his stacked desktop trays to align the few pages he has there. He is restoring his desk phone to its rightful place at the upper left hand corner of his blotter. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The rest of the bullpen is in the lull that signals the shift change, and she is caught in between. She makes her way to her own desk. She flips open the file with  Montgomery’s report in it.  She fans the sheets across her desk to make more of them than there really is. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>It’s a piece of theater. The boys, of course, approach and lobby for an after-work beer. She gestures to the report. It’s not much of an argument for why she needs to stick around, but after an exchange of mutually disgruntled <em>you make her—no </em>you <em>make her </em>looks, they decide, as a unit, to accept the fact that she’s dug in, and realistically, no one’s going to make her. She laughs to herself as the elevator doors close on Esposito, phone pressed to his ear, telling Lanie in a voice that’s not quite low enough, that that operation is <em>No Go.</em></p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>A second thought twinges briefly through her. She remembers the tug-of-war loneliness that first night and the realization of how little right she had to feel abandoned, given her habit of holding everyone at arm’s length. She thinks of her new resolve to pursue her mother’s case and how much more likely a second tumble down the rabbit hole will be if she goes it alone again. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She almost pushes to her feet. She almost gathers everything up in a hurry and goes after the boys to take them up on that beer after all. But she looks to the cell phone sitting quiet at the edge of her blotter. There’s still no word from him, but the phone itself is like a talisman. It’s a connection and sign that she’s meant to settle in and wait a while. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>So she settles in. She switches on her desk lamp and likes the defined space the tiny pool of light creates. She folds one leg beneath her and reaches for the Captain’s report. She settles in.  </p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>A/N: This is longer. I kept trying to break it into two parts, but it did not want to be broken. Next chapter is last, so eight chapters in all. Population genetics modeling? I’m your person. Simple division? Nah. </p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>She’s not relieved when he arrives. That’s not the right word for the feeling that makes its way along her nerve endings and all through her body. </p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="">
  <p>She’s not relieved when he arrives. That’s not the right word for the feeling that makes its way along her nerve endings and all through her body. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Her mind is filled with thoughts of good coffee and winter sun blazing through the windows. She rolls her shoulders into the memory of the pleasant warmth of clothes fresh from the dryer and the lemon-tinged scent of furniture polish. Her back is straight and her limbs are strong and steady with the imprint of words on the black behind her eyelids each night, and the exact thing she has needed to see, bright and early each morning. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She is the sum total of such a brief history, and all of that is how she feels when he arrives. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She doesn’t turn as he crosses to the nameplate end of her desk. She’s engrossed by the artistic license the Captain has exercised on behalf of the two of them. Montgomery has produced a great read, and she wants to see how it ends. So he stands at the nameplate end of her desk, patient, for once—or quiet, at least—and she keeps her eyes on the page in her hand.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She finishes the picaresque portion of the report. It ends with a distinct downshift in tone: <em>It is my considered, professional opinion that Mr. Castle’s quick thinking and Detective Beckett’s level-headed action preserved the lives of NYPD personnel and civilian bystanders. </em>Her heart stutters in her chest. She’s touched by the quiet support—the affirmation that there’s almost certainly nothing she could have done differently. The sentiment—the dispassionate assessment of a man she respects deeply—is all the more powerful for its understated contrast with the preceding pages.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Her gaze drops to the line awaiting her signature, right beneath the smooth flow of Montgomery’s. She doesn’t sign yet, though. It’s his story—Castle’s—as much as it’s hers, and he deserves to read it through first. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She begins by answering the question he hasn’t asked, as though they’re already deep into the conversation. And that’s how she feels, too, She feels as though the two of them are—and have been from the beginning—deep in conversation. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Montgomery’s post-incident evaluation. You come off like Steven Seagal,” says with her chin still propped on her fist. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He asks, with a hint of a smile in his voice, if he should be flattered or insulted. <em>Both, </em>she tells him as he finally sits.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He is nervous. There’s no other word for the force behind his rapid-fire monologue about multicultural culinary bonanza he’s brought with him, the fuel that drives the jerky movements of his body as he sets container after container out on her desk. She watches in awe and thinks with a smile that it’s a good thing that she freed up all that space in her organizational frenzy. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The smile is short-lived, though. It’s no certain thing. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He’s <em>nervous. </em>It’s a role reversal that she wasn’t exactly expecting. All through this terrible, soul-shaking experience, he has been solid ground. He has been funny and serious and annoying in exactly the right ratios at exactly the right moments. His timing has been impeccable every single day during a period in which she has been erratic, unfocused, unpredictable. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>And now they’re here, face to face again, and she’d thought she’d be the nervous one. She’s become acquainted with tireless butterflies and twanging nerves. For a full day, she’s been worried that she would be at a loss for how approach him in the flesh, given the strange intimacies they’d fallen into so easily over six days at a distance. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>But she is not nervous. She is all the complicated and simple things she she has been since the moment she sensed his presence behind her. She feels all the simple and complicated ways she feels, and it’s just the two of them. The boys and Montgomery have long since gone, and the bullpen is mercifully quiet for once. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She sets the report aside. She turns to face him with her folded hands resting atop the knee she has drawn up knee in a posture of patience. She waits for him to talk himself out for the moment. She lets the air between them fall quiet as he produces a pair of foil-wrapped hot dogs and reaches the end of his litany—the end of his bag of tricks. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“It wasn’t your fault, you know.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>It’s the right thing to say in exactly the right moment. He lifts his eyes to meet hers, and she sees so many complicated things. He doesn’t believe her—not yet—though he wants to, and it’s the right thing to say for just that moment, though it’s no panacea. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“I overstepped. I came down here to say that I was sorry, and that I’m through.” </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The miserable words come pouring out of him. The last two steal her breath for a moment. They slam into her ribs, but it’s a thing as short-lived as the rueful smile of a moment ago. She quiets herself by an act of will—as though calm is some free-flowing substance she can simply draw inward, and the world in this moment seems to work that way. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“I can’t shadow you anymore. If it wasn’t for me . . .” </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>If it wasn’t for him. </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>There are worlds contained within that subjunctive mood. There are histories and mythic figures. There is the lonely, static, insistently-just-fine woman she has been. There is another story entirely that she sees now she is so weary of reading, or writing, of starring in. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“If it wasn’t for you,” she says, and in saying it, she dwells in half a dozen days for a pleasant moment before she arrives at what she really needs to say here—what truth it is that she must impart. “I would never have found my mom’s killer.” </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>There’s more. There are worlds contained in what she has to say to him, here—face to face. There are masks shed on both sides and pretenses packed away. There are admissions about what her life is inalterably like, because of her mother’s death and the choices she made in the wake of it. There’s an admission that he is the first spark of joy—the first breath of relief—she has had in a decade, though she swears him to secrecy, and he makes the vow with the cheekiest of grins. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>They take up utensils. They take up arms against a sea of take out, and their conversation comes between determined mouthfuls. It comes in short bursts, familiar and comfortable enough that it seems like bubbles of light ought to enclose them. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>There is an ease to all of it that feels . . . permanent. It feels as if the time they spend in quiet, companionable conversation as day six draws to a close—the time they have spent together and apart in the days before this—has carried them far beyond their long-standing dance of two-steps-forward-three-steps-back.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She’s not sorry when it’s time to leave. That’s not precisely how she feels. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The day has been demanding in the oddest ways, and when their feast is cleared away, when she does set pen to paper and signs the report, she finds she’s tired, as though she’s been flexing seldom-used muscles all day. It’s not far from the truth. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Their good nights are quiet. They are companionable, in keeping with their evening. They feel . . . proper. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>But there’s the beat of butterfly wings when her phone vibrates before she reaches the corner. There’s satisfaction as she thumbs the phone on and finds the bubble, right and proper, too. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>Here if you want to talk. </em>
  </p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>A/N: And that’s a wrap. Brain Poneh promised a whole lotta nothing and Brain Poneh delivered. Thanks for reading. </p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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